*dusting off the ledge and pulling up a seat* I've been there. I've so been there. When I was in my late 20s, my aunt used to remind me that she didn't get married until she was 29. Now that I'm 33, I'm treated like I'm the sad old spinster who can't hook a man. Luckily I have a (married, of course) friend who does understand, so I can vent to her, but it's hard.

Also, I find that as I get older, people are more interested in my cats. Am I just paranoid, or do they think that's all I have going on?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand then the ex boyfriend calls. *sigh* Once again, he thinks I need to give him just one more chance. Of course he calls me today, when I got that "congrats on your wedding" e-mail after spending Sunday at my cousin's bridal shower. Which of course makes me wonder if he's my only chance....

Spoder, where on earth are those cookies?! I neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed them.

No, no, no, no, no! Don't think like that! I did, and I was miserable! I was convinced that Person A was my only chance to get married. He was a decent sort, but personality-wise we really weren't right for each other, and had we gotten married it would have been a disaster. My sister did marry the guy she thought was her only chance (he told her that he was the best she'd ever get, so she'd better grab him before he was snapped up by someone else, and in retrospect I wish he had been) and she ended up divorcing him seven years and three kids later.

I know I'm not eligible for membership, but I didn't get married until I was 39 so I've been through a lot of the same things most of y'all have been through.

In one of my lectures yesterday the lecturer was talking about nursing in the late 19th and early 20th century, about how the nurses would train at 16ish and work until they got married at 22ish then they'd stop to be full time wives and mothers, only the spinsters stayed working as nurses and eventually ended up as the matrons running the hospitals.

I was feeling strangely self-conscious throughout! Goes to show though, there have always been women who for whatever reason just didn't get married, they still made a valuable contribution to society even in the days when the pressure to marry was even more extreme than it is now.